Some Intriguing Thoughts On The Alleged Monogram Issues Of Leontius

As you might have noticed, several times previously I had posted some comments regarding the AE4 monogram attributed to Leontius.
TL/DR: a specimen sold at CNG in 2016 (attributed as Leo I without comment) had a large (for the type) amount of obverse legend, reading [xx]NAS[x]AI, with S retrograde; a matching specimen is depicted in the July 2009 Celator, p. 28, figure 5, from which the legend can be read as ...NASMAI.

That was where I had stopped for a long time. There wasn't really any good interpretation of NASMAI, though whatever it was intended to say it certainly wasn't Leontius. My theory was that it was [VERI]NA something, which wasn't contradicted by anything I knew of at the time.


Two years later. I am checking out Wroth's 1911 catalog of Germanic coins for an unrelated thread, and stumble at listing #179... the familiar NASMA-with-retrograde-S jumps out at me in a completely different context.
I check the plates (IV-34). The reverse is gone, but the obverse is so close to the CNG specimen it might as well be a die match.

That by itself is intriguing. Wroth mentions similarity to type 110; that's plate IV-9, and the monogram depicted is consistent with Leontius.

Normally a mention in a catalog that old would be a dead end. But this is the BMC, and some of their items are now findable online.
It turns out that the coin listed under #179 by Wroth is this item. Indeed, the reverse is gone, the obverse reads NASMA with S retrograde (the I would have been just off flan), and... is that another letter?

I started looking for the other coins listed by Wroth as similar. Turns out that some of the items are there, but without images.
I did, however, find this coin. It joined the BMC in 1934, so it's not in Wroth's catalog in its own right, but it's consistent with Wroth 20, one of the coins described as similar.
The obverse legend is DMNASN[A], with a correctly-facing S and the following letter looking more like N than M; but it's close enough to seriously consider it in the reading of the legend on the other coin, which would consequently be [DM]NASMAI.

As a side-note, July 2009 Celator p. 28 also features figure 1, the legend on which they read as EN. In light of the aforementioned coins, I propose a reading of [D]MN..., which would consequently be a further match to the coins described above.
(Note that the first M in the reconstructed DMNASMAI is very much unlike the second M. It's possible that the legend should be read DENASMAI instead.)


...Update: while compiling this post, I found this Italian thread, which features a better photo of the Celator figure 1 coin, as well as several other specimens with a NASM legend.

Whatever name was intended to be listed on those coins? I still don't know, and now I don't even have a good guess. The Celator article suggests a blundered Anastasius, which is possible, though it would be strange that his name would be blundered so consistently. (There's no M in it.)
Wroth, somewhat daringly, suggests Masuna. AFAIK the known specimens are from Egypt rather than Algeria, and the use of Leo's monogram would suggest a period some decades earlier, but offhand I can't think of any reason to rule that out either.

It would be interesting to see the specimens, with their "blundered legends" [sic], from Walker's 1967 article (cited by the Celator). I was unable (so far) to find the article online.
Overall, however, this subject certainly seems to deserve further study.